


RATED M (FOR MAIL)

by glitchesaintshit



Category: Slipknot (Band)
Genre: Domestic, Established Relationship, ILLEGALLY SOFT, Other, Reader-Insert, [IRON GIANT MEME] ART!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!, gender neutral reader, no reader gender specified
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-15
Updated: 2020-06-15
Packaged: 2021-03-03 18:47:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24730294
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glitchesaintshit/pseuds/glitchesaintshit
Summary: He’s building fires with his bare hands for something to do and you’re stuck in your office, up to your nuts in envelopes with sticky notes stuck on them in various stages of packed cuz in addition to being a workaholic you’re also absentminded, and there’s asystemhere to keep things organized.If only you could stay ahead of it.you: an artist experiencing a sudden burst of internet success despite global pandemic. him: an insufferable clown spending quarantine descending into Local Bird Man status. he is going to pack your webstore orders for you so your body hurts less. yes, this is dumb as hell.
Relationships: Shawn Crahan/Reader
Comments: 18
Kudos: 18





	RATED M (FOR MAIL)

**Author's Note:**

> I'D LIKE TO DEDICATE THIS ONE TO ALL MY FELLOW CLOWNFUCKERS OUT THERE. ALL THREE OF YOU. I SEE YOU & I RESPECT U  
> EVERYBODY ELSE TOUGH NUTS  
> I REGRET NOTHING
> 
> so it's unofficial Reader-Insert Emotional Comfort Fic week on h*rny slipknot tumblr!! i'm calling it! feel free to throw yr hat in the ring bc i want to read ALL OF IT
> 
> i've never written reader-insert before so!!! i'm not going to pretend this is anything other than extensive documentation of one of the 9000 fantasy worlds i retreat into at the slightest whiff of irl inconvenience!!!!!! but i refuse to be embarrassed by this bc in order to be embarrassed you must know shame & i rly do think god forgot to plug that one in on me!!!! 404 error, dignity not found
> 
> enjoy the garbage
> 
> thx marina & THE SQUAD~~ for gassing me up but let's be honest i 100% would've done this without you because i cannot be stopped when i get a bad idea like this

One of your art friends is friends with the guitarist from the biggest post-hardcore band to come out of your home state, somehow, despite your art friend living three states away but y’know. The world is a small place. These things happen. So when your friend promoted your shop--for your art; stickers, patches, pins, t-shirts, y’know, fun things like that--their friend in the band bought some stuff and you didn’t know because they never were your cup of tea so the name didn’t register weird at all so it’s not like you _know them_ and you sent it off because thanks for the order. 

But then, y’know, it’s quarantine. There’s a little bit of a pandemic on. You might’ve lost all the income you were gonna pick up this year at art shows, but you’re hustling. A little COVID never stopped anybody. 

And bands can’t tour (obviously, since the germaphobe you’ve been running around with is _also_ in a band that can’t tour due to global health concerns so he’s been tottering around the house building birdhouses & obsessively reading viral projections & comparing brands of peanut butter & Facetiming his kids & ordering dumb things on the internet) so people are streaming, and your art friend’s friend who’s in the biggest post-hardcore band to come out of your home state (somehow) wears one of your beanies on a stream and drops a link to the shop in the chat--or whatever, y’know, who watches streams? You wouldn’t know how to work a stream if it came up & bit you in the leg & this is why Shawn’s been _birdwatching_ and not clowning around on Twitch like some of his peers, neither of you can get it together--and traffic on your website explodes. Like, tenfold. You thought you were doing great when you had sixty people a day checking out your shop, but now most days you’re clocking over a thousand and that’s _crazy_. 

And it translates into sales. Which is great! Sales are wonderful!! Especially since with shows all postponed til 2021 or forever, you’ve been cut off at the knees and those deposits don’t seem to be coming back. 

It’s just... _a lot_ of sales. Any mere mortal would’ve crumbled under the enormity of the task as sole entrepreneur, but you’re a terminal workaholic; never one to shy away from a challenge. Which is how you ended up with Shawn in the first place, this--whatever it is. He was like, “ _I’m old and fucked up, you don’t want me_ ” and you were like “ _okay, idiot, watch this_ ” and that was...a while ago.

(Once upon a time you were at your day job at the local record/used-book-and-media store that _happened_ to be less than five miles from the amphitheater when him and Corey came rolling in all incognito, like either of them have ever been anything subtle in their fucking lives. Who even knows what you did right at that point--that job was just you trying to hold your own against insufferable middle aged men talking down to you on a daily basis about the stuff in your own store--the stuff you, as the creative brain in a staff of five, were responsible for marketing & promoting to uncultured locals--so maybe it was just the refusal to take his shit, rock star or no. 

Who knows. Shawn’s never shied away from a challenge either. Maybe it was just something in the air that day. High pollen count. Temporary insanity.

You do know this much for sure: he fucked up some blatantly obvious fact about a book you’d endcapped personally the day before, less than six feet from the counter you were cleaning a huge buyback of used funk vinyl on, and in that moment the urge to correct a Middle Aged Man Who Is Wrong was stronger than the urge to _Maybe Not Do That Cuz That’s The Fucking Clown From Slipknot And Corey Taylor’s Fifteen Feet The Other Way_. So you opened your mouth about it because after the “White Zombie Only Made One Album” Incident two days earlier you were feeling extra-testy about Middle Aged Men Being Wrong In Your Vicinity, and the back of his neck flushed as he turned down the next aisle and barked back over the screamo album your coworker put on before she left, 

“ _Good to know._ ”

He bought the book, maybe out of some kind of shame, with a couple others and a weird horror DVD and the limited edition John Carpenter Lost Themes vinyl somebody brought in to sell back that went directly into the locked case cuz it was a sealed numbered orange pressing and those go for a hundred and fifty bucks online. But his eyes sparkled when he leaned on the counter to check out, taking up as much space as possible, which would be irritating if it came from any _other_ self-important middle-aged man. 

“ _So do you have an email address...?_ ”

And you said something like, “ _I mean, who’s asking?_ ” and instantly regretted it, even though he wasn’t wearing a ring anymore, y’know. 

And you could see this cuz he put his hands up in the internationally recognized gesture of _sorry, sorry, no harm intended_ and said, “ _Me, y’know. None of these fools read--_ ” (to which Corey yelled “ _hey!_ ” from the Fresh Hot Used DVDs table, cuz y’know, he can’t not) “ _\--and clearly you do. Might be nice to discuss some literature. I get bored._ ”

And then you said, on god, “ _Only boring people get bored,_ ” because there’s no amount of sleepy smile & blue eyes that could cut through your lizard brain’s Middle Aged Moron Defense System and you instantly wanted to melt into the floor, but he laughed instead and said “ _that’s fair. I’m sure you never get bored._ ”

And you said “ _nope_ ” cuz people hate when you’re confident, and he laughed again and said it was nice to meet you. And you wrote down your email on the back of his receipt when it printed, even if it meant having to try every pen in the cup before you got one to work.

He emailed you with his take on the book a few days later, and even if it was horrendously wrong you started chatting. 

Then you drove seven hours in your beater car to get to a different amphitheater as the tour was winding down, and for the trouble he bought you dinner. It was the absolute least he could do.

The rest is history.)

You don’t have to work at record stores anymore, but it was a fun way to stay sane before the shutdown. Now all you’ve got is the art biz and Shawn shuffling around the house in his old man slippers, messing around with the landscaping.

(“ _I’m gonna_ kill _this fuckin’ honeysuckle dude, I swear to God--_ ” 

“ _Can’t you just leave the honeysuckle be?_ ” 

“ _No! It’s killing the goddamn maple tree--look--_ ” 

And then he’s tugging you barefoot off the back porch to the treeline at the edge of the property; sweaty palm clasping yours tight, cord of his earbuds draped around his neck. Droplets of sweat in the late spring heat. Blue jays on the birdfeeder, smeared with the fresh-ground bulk peanut butter from the machine at the bougie crunchy hippie grocery store, this week’s test in local bird peanut butter preference.

It doesn’t _look_ like the maple tree is suffering in any way, but what do you know. You’re not a dendrologist, you make art and put it on stickers and sell the stickers on the internet. Had you been cut out for a career in forestry you woulda gone to ranger school and avoided the whole self-made artist concept in the first place but then again if _he_ was cut out for a career in forestry he woulda done the same, and now you’re just two idiots with a maple tree that may or may not be dying due to honeysuckle, standing in the yard holding hands with the sun high overhead and the cicadas screaming in the trees. Shawn puts his arm around your shoulders and gives you a squeeze and you snort a laugh & shake your head, putting an arm around his waist to squeeze him back, and then you’re two idiots staring at this tree and cuddling in the yard a little for no reason.)

He’s building fires with his bare hands for something to do and you’re stuck in your office, up to your nuts in envelopes with sticky notes stuck on them in various stages of packed cuz in addition to being a workaholic you’re also absentminded, and there’s a _system_ here to keep things organized. 

If only you could stay ahead of it. 

Everything just happens so much, and then there’s the email. Oh god, the _email._

So you’re crumbling slowly under order volume you’ve never seen before, volume that’s got nothing on the online art fairs and promo drives you ran yourself ragged with at the start of lockdown. It’s at least double. No-- _triple,_ and you thought the stack of sticky notes from Stay Home Fest was insane. 

You can’t complain cuz you’re so grateful and so thrilled that people want to _buy your art,_ and it doesn’t matter if an order is three dollars or a hundred dollars--you still treat it with the same level of care. Handwritten thank-you letter telling them what you’ve been up to and wishing them well and to tag you on Insta if they like their stuff, reminding them to hydrate. Hand-cut business cards, cuz why pay a print service to die-cut your shit when you have two filthy hands and a pair of scissors? A little freebie you made specifically for pandemic-times that started as a way to bribe people to buy your shit but now feels like a symbol of solidarity. Free stickers. Seal it with cute tape and a sticker from your extensive hoard and put postage on it. Handwritten address, decorative stamps on the envelope. It’s just the way you’ve always done it. You don’t know how to do it any other way, and even if you did you wouldn’t ever want to do it _less._

It’s not about streamlining a shipping system, it’s about making sure everyone that’s given you their money for your art feels like it was worth it & they had a good experience; something to truly brighten up their week. You can streamline how you get things into packages and get the packages into the box by the door to take to the post office, but the level of care you take is still the same. Three dollars or three hundred dollars, you think everybody deserves the best out of you.

(When your carpal tunnel flares up, Shawn suggests making a flyer you can just scribble a handwritten “ _thanks~! <3_” on the back of and sign your name, or making square business cards. Or using Paypal’s shipping function to print labels with the To and From already on them and postage ready to go. Doing literally anything to lighten the load.

“ _I mean, I could---_ ” you balk. “ _But,_ y’know....”

He holds his hands up, the universal gesture of _I get it, no harm intended,_ book abandoned on the arm of the couch. He’s still not wearing a ring but now his palms are getting calloused across his Girdle of Venus, Ring of Solomon-- _temperment, emotions, the ability to put oneself aside to serve the greater good_ \--from raking mulch and hauling the weed-whacker around. 

“ _I just want it to be worth it for people, y’know? There’s a pandemic on, and they’re giving me money--_ ”

“ _I get it completely,_ ” he says, and he means it.)

\--

You want everybody to have your best, and that’s why you slide into bed an hour and a half after Shawn does, settling into the pillows with your aching wrists stretched over your head.

“Did ya finish?” he asks, bleary; hair sticking up at all angles where he’s still recovering from last year’s stupid haircut & immediate desire to grow it back out. The TV’s playing _South Park_ reruns softly on the other side of the room cuz the man cannot sleep in true quiet and it’s your job (late to bed every night forever with your spritely sleep schedule in comparison to his creaky bones) to turn it off. 

It’s fine. You don’t mind, the way he looks lit up by cartoons in his sleep, even when it’s late enough that the show keeps cutting to the world’s loudest phone sex ads and commercials for vodka that are loud enough to drown out commercial air traffic. 

“Nah, body gave up. I’ll get it tomorrow. M’brain feels like mashed potatoes,” you say quietly. Shawn just hums a _mmmmm_ and drags you into his arms, holding you against his chest warm & heavy. Gently kissing the swollen knob of your wrist bones. 

\--

The next day he’s back at it with the mulch & you’re back at it in your office that looks out onto the side yard, window open to catch the breeze & your favorite power metal album to keep you company. Ice-cold beverage of choice fresh from the bottom of the fridge & close at hand. 

You’re twenty orders deep before your heart swells with that _this is exactly where I always wanted to be_ feeling. The smell of fresh mulch & honeysuckle & jasmine & cut grass floating in, good tunes, cool office space; putting _your art_ into envelopes to ship off to like-minded weirdos around the world. If the depressed teenage you could see you now, they’d shit their pants.

It’s really, really cool.

Eventually Shawn’s voice drifts in like “ _Having fun in there?_ ” and you look up & he’s _standing in the fucking picker bushes outside the window_ , thorns be damned, his sweaty face pressed against a hand cupped against the screen to block the sun. 

“ _Always._ ”

“Just checking,” he says, wiping his face on his sleeve. It leaves a wet streak the size of his whole head, which _gross,_ but also you go open the screen to peek out at him. “I’ll leave you alone, it’s okay. You’re busy. Just wanted to say hey.”

“Thanks for stopping by,” you grin, and he rocks up onto his tiptoes to kiss you, sweat and all.

\--

But then you look up and it’s four hours later and no appreciable progress has been made and you’ve never wanted to be anywhere exactly _less,_ y’know. In this hell of your own creation. Vaguely sweaty in a sea of unpostaged envelopes, both your feet asleep, shoulder cramping from overzealous thank-you writing, stomach angry from being ignored for _just two more_ six or eight or nineteen times.

Shawn’s in the kitchen when you stagger in, making himself a sandwich on a paper towel. Headphones slung around his neck again, tangled in the dishtowel over his shoulder that’s as good as dead now, it’s been so thoroughly sweated on with a big black streak of _god knows what_ cutting through it. Gross. He’s nasty, but you’re sort of equal parts impressed & proud anyway. Being involved with this gross man & his gross friends has truly tanked your standards.

Then again, they probably weren’t that high to begin with, but y’know. Y’know. 

_Y’know._

“How’s it going?” he asks, sidling up next to you while you search through the cupboards for something that maximizes calories with minimum effort and will keep you full for longer than snack cakes will cuz having to attend to your human body’s needs is stupid and irritating when there’s work to be done.

“ _Don’t even ask_ ,” you groan and he snorts a laugh, setting his sandwich down to pull your hands back out of the cupboard and wrap them around his waist, holding them there til you relax enough that he’s certain you’ll stay before putting his arms around you in return.

You just sigh, letting your shoulders drop a little and leaning into him, smashing your face into his shoulder. The heat’s coming off him in waves but he’s been inside long enough to be cool on the outside layer, a little clammy. Solid & stable, strong. Broad hands & a couple days of stubble. _Perfect,_ but there’s no telling him that or it’ll go right to his head. He’s insufferable like that. It’s the clown in him. 

You let him just hold you like that for a while, smelling like metal & ozone & sweat & grass & dirty hair & papercuts, just breathing together. It’s nice. You needed it.

\--

You swore the night before you’d get it all done before bed so you could wake up today with the satisfaction of being able to start fresh, but then your elbow crapped out and your brain started disintegrating & falling out your ears--or at least it felt like it did--and you had to call it quits, easing into bed with all your bones creaking worse than the old man snoozing on the other side & now it’s the next day & you’re back on the floor of your office, surrounded by more mail orders than you probably can cope with in this life or the next. 

_Fuck._

Every day you’re more convinced Shawn’s some kind of psychic cuz when you open your eyes ( _laying on the floor with your hands over your face, trying to hold in the noises of distress that’ll drown out your playlist for sure_ ) he’s looking down at you from the open door. 

His hair’s brushed back wet from his face and that’s a clean shirt & where it stretches around his arms you can tell he got some sun; the tops of his cheeks and bridge of his nose are a little toasted too. It’s cute, even upside-down. He looks zen AF but y’know. Concerned. Maybe cuz you’re laying on the floor like a crazy person & there’s a pile of mail the size of a baby panda bear stacked in a box by the door waiting for the post office to open tomorrow. 

“Look, babe--” he starts and you just groan, knowing where this is going. “I’m not asking--”

“ _Sounds like it--_ ”

“I’m telling--”

You just groan, covering your face with your hands again. “Shawn--”

“I can help!”

“It’s fine, I got this. It’s a one-man operation, y’know, I’ve been fine for _years--_ ”

“ _Babe,_ ” he says firmly. Y’know, _the_ voice. His ringleader voice. The I’m In Charge Here Now And You Motherfuckers Are Going To Listen voice. The “ _Slipknot Is Not A Democracy, Craig, It’s A Religious--Hey Quit Looking At Me Like That, Asshole_ ” voice. 

He doesn’t even need to finish the sentence and he doesn’t really have to, just settles in amongst your piles with a couple of choice grunts on the way to floor level and starts poking through boxes. Flipping through stacks, looking at sticky notes. Bringing himself up to speed on what’s going on so you don’t have to interrupt your valuable Laying On The Floor Incapacitated By Crisis Workloads time explaining things and you silently, for just a second, thank whoever’s playing along at home you’re not involved with a _complete_ idiot. He just doesn’t think a lot of the time. 

“Y’know, I used to send out our demos and do all the merch,” Shawn says and you can feel the ramble coming on. “Not just Slipknot but Pale Ones before, y’know--we’d advertise our tapes in zines and whatnot, y’know, I used to have just _boxes_ of this shit in my living room--”

“That was in the _nineties,_ old man,” you tease.

“Yeah, well, _Paul_ wasn’t gonna do it--and y’know, I think Joey might have ADD, he overlooks details sometimes, y’know, and you can’t be like that when you’ve got people’s _money…_ ”

“Why do you think I do everything myself?”

“ _You’re stubborn,_ ” he chuckles. 

“Yeah, and,” you say, swatting at his knee halfheartedly. “I know if I fuck it up I only’ve got myself to blame, and I don’t trust other people to not fuck it up, so…”

“Promise I won’t fuck it up,” Shawn says. “Used to have to take everything to the post office myself too, we didn’t _have_ all the Paypal and the scales and whatever, that was--they just had that _there,_ y’know, it was like an official thing unless you knew somebody that worked in a mailroom and I pissed off the only guy I knew that worked in a mailroom so he wasn’t gonna help me with shit for my band...” 

He trails off, squinting through his glasses at a sticky note like his prescription is suddenly the problem and not your handwriting. But y’know. Penmanship was never your calling & it’s not like you were expecting this process to get taken over by someone else halfway. It’s definitely on you. You just don’t want to use your finite supply of legibility on notes to yourself and then have a package end up in Malaysia when it was supposed to be going to Marquette. Legibility’s not a renewable resource. “ _What’s that say?_ ”

“ _Plus freebies,_ y’know. So I don’t forget to put those in. Cuz I _will_ forget.”

“You’re simple,” he teases. “Good thing you’re cute.”

“You remember when Christ shot pool,” you deadpan right back. “Good thing _you’re_ cute...”

“Motherfucker owes me twenty bucks,” he says with a crinkle of a smile in his voice. “That’s like...three-point-eight _billion_ when you count for inflation…”

You just snort a laugh and get comfortable again. It still feels uneasy--knowing someone else is touching your stuff, _packing your orders_ \--but Shawn seems to have it figured out. It’s not exactly rocket science, putting stickers in envelopes. A monkey could probably do it. You just don’t trust a monkey either. 

But it’s easy. You trust him enough to not fuck it up, and it isn’t like you’re not gonna triple-check everything before you seal it up (with a damp sponge for the envelopes that aren’t self-adhesive, thankyouverymuch. #coronaready) and put stamps on it anyway. You still have thank-you notes to finish too, and nothing can go out the door til it has one of those, so. 

It’s comforting too, in a way. Just the soft sounds of shuffling envelopes and the complete Who discography he’s been working his way through the past few days down on low in your Bluetooth speakers, cuz he’s helping you out and it wouldn’t be fair to police his choice of jams. There’s something weirdly nostalgic about it--the music, the open window, the close personal comfort--like all the afternoons you spent staring at the dormer of your best friend’s bedroom in your hometown, staring at their posters, telling stories about what it’d be like when the both of you finally got out; all the weekends spent creating mischief together, going on missions that meant nothing in the scheme of things but meant everything in the moment. Making promises & nicknames. Thousands of inside jokes you can’t even remember. Classic rock radio leaking out of the neighbors’ garages when you walked past, Slurpees dyeing your teeth blue together. Everything now is just wish fulfillment. 

But you’d be lying if you said you didn’t work your ass off to get here. That’s the part of the dream you never anticipated when you were fifteen--how much endless drudge work was involved. 

“You should get an intern. We can borrow someone from the warehouse, y’know? Be like _hey, mail party at Clown’s house,_ come help pack some stuff, we’ll buy you pizza…”

“As great as that would be, there’s a little bit of a cold going around, if you didn’t notice--” you tease.

“I have like, _so many_ respirators…” he trails off, adding another envelope to the growing stack in his lap. “We’d be fine.”

You laugh softly, scooting a little bit closer until you’re practically half-laying in his lap and he wordlessly moves his stack of envelopes-- _your_ envelopes, the ones he’s packing for you--to make room for you to get comfy. 

And he ribs you about if all this volume means you’ll finally cave and get a p.o. box like he’s been saying for the last fiscal quarter (“ _No? Cuz then I’d have to go check it, y’know--_ ” “ _Better than people Googling up your business address & realizing it’s Casa del Crahan..._”) or some employees, y’know, cuz surely now everything’s coming up Milhouse and you don’t know how to explain you have such a long way to go still and this is just a temporary spike cuz he believes in you & you don’t want to crush his dreams. But y’know, maybe someday. Maybe it wouldn’t be outrageous for you to get a p.o. box and some poor intern to check it for you and hold down the web order fort while you’re out on the road at shows & events & playing tour catch-up. Addressing all the envelopes to maintain the good human vibes while making sure your wrists don’t hurt. Collaborating & just vibing & going through it together. It would be nice. 

And Shawn does as much as he can from the floor with you in his lap then makes sure you have your water bottle & some throw pillows before he stands up to start shoving beanies into bubble mailers, singing along to “Trick of the Light”.

You’ll do the thank-you notes tomorrow.


End file.
